1. Field
The field relates to visual information systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for enabling participants to assume control over a presentation in a remote viewing session.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephones enable people to communicate verbally, but do not enable participants to a telephone call to exchange visual information with each other. Conventionally, when visual information such as a PowerPoint (™ Microsoft Corporation) presentation or a document was to be referenced during a telephone conversation, the visual information would be faxed, e-mailed, or otherwise physically sent to the participants so that the participants could have the reference materials available during the telephone call.
As technology evolved, software was developed to allow information being shown on one computer monitor (display information), to be made visible on another computer monitor associated with another computer at a different location (viewer information). Software of this nature will be referred to herein as “Remote Viewing Software” (RVS). The computer that is showing the information will be referred to herein as the “display” and the computer that is being used to look at the information remotely will be referred to herein as the “viewer”.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a typical way in which remote viewing of display information may take place. As shown in FIG. 1, a display participant 10 may desire to allow display information 12 appearing on the display monitor 14 associated with a display computer 16, to be made available to a viewer participant 18. To do so, RVS software 20 on the display computer 16 will capture the display information 12 and pass it over a network 22 to a viewer machine 24. An instantiation of the RVS software 26 (which may be the same as RVS software 20 or a limited version of RVS software 20) will decode the display information received over the remote viewing session to generate viewer information 28 that will be caused to appear on the viewer monitor 30. A remote viewing service 32 may be provided to support viewing sessions on the network.
A combination of the display computer and display monitor will collectively be referred to herein as a “display” 34. The display computer and display monitor may be separate devices or integrally formed. Although the term “monitor” typically refers to a computer monitor, the display 34 may have any type of component that enables the display information 12 to be shown to the participant 10. Similarly, a combination of a viewer machine and viewer monitor will collectively be referred to herein as a “viewer” 36. Like the display, the viewer machine and viewer monitor may be separate devices or integrally formed.
By looking at the viewer information 28 on the viewer monitor 30, the viewer participant 18 may thus see a reproduction of what the display participant is being shown on the display monitor 14. A remote viewing session over which the display information is transmitted may be implemented directly by the display machine 16 or, optionally, the remote viewing service 32 may assume a portion of the tasks required to implement the session.
When the system of FIG. 1 is in use, the display participant may cause a desired visual presentation to appear as viewer information on the viewer monitor 30 simply by causing the desired visual presentation to appear on his local display monitor. Since the display participant 10 is able to control the display computer, and hence the content that is used to form the display information being shown on the display monitor, the display participant may control the content that is made to appear on the viewer monitor. Reference may then be made to the shared information to enable more effective communication to take place between the display participant and viewer participants.
Remote Viewing Software (RVS) tools vary significantly in their complexity. For example, some RVS tools require all participants to have special purpose RVS software installed on their machines, firewalls custom configured to enable traffic to pass over the networks, and require extensive training Other RVS tools are much simpler to use, such as the RVS tool developed by Glance Networks™.
Depending on the circumstances, it may be desirable for the display participant to allow another participant to control the presentation that is being shown by the display computer. For example, two people may be making a joint presentation to a group and may wish to present different portions of a unified presentation. If one of the two presenters initiates a session, it may be desirable for the presenter to cede control of his machine to the other presenter for the other portion of the presentation. As another example, a person giving a software demonstration or performing software training may wish to allow one of the viewers to interact with the software, e.g. to interact with the user interface of the software that is being demonstrated. In these and other situations, it may be desirable for the display participant to allow one or more of the viewer participants to assume control over the display computer during a remote viewing session.